January 19, 2009--Tomorrow

I am writing this from 30,000 feet. In a jet heading south to Florida from New York. Much as I did the first time I flew, more than 50 years ago. To visit my Aunt Fannie and Uncle Harry who had moved there six months earlier to seek new opportunities. Harry had never been successful in New York and had heard there would be many in the rapidly-developing Land of Sunshine.

His dream never materialized and he wound up partners and working with a distant cousin in a broken-down gas station in what is now known as South Beach, where he had to stand on his feet all day in the blazing sun until he was mercifully carried away permanently by a heart attack that was undoubtedly the product of his smoking three packs of Camels a day.

But he and Fannie showed me a good time during my stay. I marveled at the tropical splendor, having left New York in a blizzard, and all the glimmer and glitz of the chain of neo-Deco hotels that stretched along the translucent Atlantic, all the way up to what seemed to me a wonder of the world, the most-recently-opened sinuous Fountainebleau.

Quickly, though, even to my innocent eyes, another picture of the South began to emerge from out of the shimmer of the man-made and natural beauty. In fact, my first hint that something else was going on, something sinister, was the very evening when we visited—actually drove by--the fabled Fountainebleau.

As the sun was setting, lined up at a bus stop opposite this pleasure palace, was a crowd of Negro women. No men. No whites. Just a huddle of Negro women. Curious and puzzled, sitting in the front seat next to Harry, I asked, “Who are they?”

“I think they work at the hotel.” He gestured at the Marseilles, which glinted in the setting sun. “Probably as chamber maids. They need a lot of them.”

His matter-of-factness, not hinting that anything was out of the ordinary, did not quell my curiosity and so I asked, “Did you see that everyone there is a Negro?”

He didn’t answer, which I attributed to the fact that he was driving in heavy traffic and, in spite of what he did for a living, was uncertain behind the wheel.

But as we passed the next hotel I noticed the same thing—a long line of black women at the bus stop. Without the need to ask again, seeing that I had turned to Harry and was beginning to form another question, Fannie, from the back seat, leaned forward and with her hand on my shoulder, with a hint of sadness, said, “Darling, that’s the way it is here.”

“Here?”

“In Florida. In the South.” Thinking she had said enough she became quiet but continued to sit leaning forward with her hand still gently touching me.

“I don’t think I understand,” I couldn’t take my eyes off the women as the car had stopped at a light, “What do you mean ‘that’s the way it is here’?”

Almost in a whisper, as if in the hope I wouldn’t hear, Aunt Fannie said, “Colored people aren’t allowed to remain on Miami Beach after dark.”

Thinking that would be enough for me to understand, or not wanting to be required to say more, she sat there looking at me. I could see tears beginning to well in her eyes.

Though I was beginning to understand I needed to hear more. I needed to have her, an adult, explain and take responsibility for what I inevitably knew was going to be the meaning of what I was witnessing.

Still she peered beseechingly at me as if that alone would suffice as an explanation. But I wouldn’t accept that, and so again I asked, “Why? Please, tell me. I need to know. I need to hear.” I too by then was on the verge of tears.

“You’re still just a child. You don’t yet need to know these kind of things.”

I glanced over at Harry who was crouched over the steering wheel and seemed to be concentrating even more on his driving.

“But I do. Why do they have to leave?”

“Because Miami Beach is an island, a barrier island—you know what that is.” I nodded. “And people don’t want them here at night. They don’t trust them to be here when it gets dark.”

“’People’?”

“White people.”

“What are they afraid of? Of these ladies who work in the hotels? What harm could they possibly do?”

“I don’t know. Up north we didn’t think this way.”

“But down here it’s different,” Harry said without taking his eyes off the road. I could see him gripping and regripping the steering wheel. I looked over at him hoping he would say more. With that Fannie slumped back in her seat.

It by then was getting quite dark and I could see the women at the bus stops anxiously peering up Collins Avenue. “What will happen to them if the bus doesn’t come before dark?”

Harry remained silent and then said, “Trouble.” He paused, “Big trouble.”

“But it wouldn’t be their fault.”

“Doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t be here.”

I wondered who he was speaking for—he after all was a just a relocated New Yorker, not a southerner. Though from the frustrations of his life he was an angry and often fearsome man, I took the chance to press him. “You also think they shouldn’t be here?”

Fanny leaned forward again and said, “Leave him be, Harry, he’s only a boy.”

“He’s old enough to know,” Harry growled.

I agreed. I wanted to hear what he had to say. “They need to know their place. It’s not like up north where people live a different way.” He had been in Florida for only a little more than a year. “They have to respect the way of life here. There’s no point in being uppity. That only upsets things. Makes trouble for all concerned.”

I was shivering with fear but still managed to ask, “Trouble for who? I’m not understanding.” I did but wanted to make him as uncomfortable as possible by not letting what he said suffice or seem acceptable to me.

“When you get back home,” he snapped, “in one of your history classes, see what they say about the old days. And I’m talking about the time after the Civil War. How people down here lived in harmony. No one was upset about the kinds of things you’re asking about. They just got along. The coloreds knew their place and were content. They got taken care of and not bothered so long as they did their work and stayed where they belonged.” He looked over at me, “What was so wrong with that? Where’s the need to stir things up? If you ask me I say, leave well-enough alone.”

The light changed and he returned to his fitful driving. A bus finally pulled up and the women pushed to get on. “It doesn’t look all that well to me,” I muttered, as if to myself.

Harry then said, squinting straight ahead, also as if he were speaking into a void, “Trust me, it never will be different,”

The days that remained passed quickly; and during that time while Fannie, who did not have children of her own, clutched at me more than usual, Harry and I did not exchange another word except for morning and after work pleasantries. And I never again visited while he was alive.